Crooked Crumlin

Crooked Crumlin

So did you know that Crumlin in Irish is Croimghlinn, meaning “Crooked Glen”? (Thanks Wikipedia!) I decided to do a bit of research on the area because we are doing some small bits around the house and needed to figure out how old it actually is.

We laughed at Crooked Glen, everything in the house is crooked. Our floors, part of the walls. And I love it, it adds charm. Conrad hates it, because it makes hanging anything straight on the wall a real pain.

For the most recent work we are trying to do we were asked how old our house was. I checked the survey we had done when we bought and it says 1950’s, the insurance goes with 1930’s and the ESB somewhere in the 1940’s. So I took a deeper look at the area.

The early history is all about battles, poems and churches. Some very interesting stuff that you can find on the Drimnagh Castle website. Also if you want to have a look yourself, take a walk to the end of the village and the corner to St. Mary’s Road and check out the old church. The kids tell me it’s very Harry Potter!

But I’m more interested in finding out when it became an estate and the Iveagh Trust website was a great help here. Between 1926 and 1936 the first dwellings were built under a suburban cottage scheme. They started with 42 houses and ended up at 136. The total cost of development was a whopping £134,000! These houses are still on the Crumlin Road (check out the ones opposite the Texaco).

Overcrowding in the city then led to the corporation deciding on more housing schemes and that’s how first Marion came about and that scheme was followed in Cabra and Crumlin in the 30’s and 40’s.

And that’s where the information gets thin. There is of course plenty out there on institution like the lawn bowling clubs, the hospital and GAA club. But little about the estate and how it grew. So if you have any more information on this, please share it with me!

The nice thing about this research has really been appreciating my area a bit more. Over the crookedness you can sometimes forget all the clubs, the green spaces, shopping and churches. It’s a great place to be!